Growing underground: Canadian medicinal marijuana producer trys to put down U.S. roots

The sprawling copper mine that stretches deep below White Pine once employed thousands of people, helping make the remote Michigan town a thriving outpost of the state’s northern hinterland.

Prices for the metal eventually started to sink, however, and in 1996 the facility shut down, leaving White Pine a virtual ghost town. Suburban bungalows built to house copper miners and their families sell today to vacationers for as little as $10,000.

Now, though, a Canadian company is promoting an unorthodox form of salvation for the area, floating a plan to grow marijuana inside the cavernous mine to serve the state’s legion of 180,000 licensed pot users. Like a similar subterranean operation that Prairie Plant Systems (PPS) owns in Manitoba, the Michigan site would offer security from theft, natural climate control and little chance of contamination, its supporters argue.